Hotspotsystem on separate dd-wrt interface

This post is for troubleshooting. Not working fully, yet! Clients are not redirected to splash page!

Hotspotsystem

What is Hotspotsystem?

HotspotSystem is captive portal management and billing service for companies or individuals who want to provide internet for their customers. While giving out free Wi-FI, you can promote your bussines by redirecting your customers to your web page or Facebook page where they need to "like" it to gain internet access. This increases you business visibility, customer engagement and sales. Also, it can be used in home purposes to show off in front of your friends:)

How much does it costs?

About pricing see this page. Good news is that they have FREE BASIC package (with splash/landing web page) with no monthly fee only limited with 500 logins per month / location. You can have unlimited number of locations (hotspots).

How does it works?

DD-WRT uses software called coova chilli to establish connection to Hotspotsystem radius server where all authentication is done. After that you can manage your clients through cloud based software on Hotspotsystem web page (setting quotas, bandwidth limit, vouchers, data capture etc.).

Setup guide

We'll do it in 3 steps:

• create Hotspotsystem account
• setup DD-WRT unit
• manage your clients on Hotspotsystem Cloud

Creating Hotspotsystem account is very easy and fast. Just fill out this form and submit. Be careful when choosing operator username because it will appear in the URL your guests see when they open HotSpot start page. Choose your business plan (Free Basic or Social) and proceed to setup dd-wrt unit.

• Setup DD-WRT unit: 

Before we proceed make sure you backed up your working configuration (Administration > Backup > nvram.bin). If something goes wrong just reset your unit and restore working configutaion. Make sure that you are using build 30342 and later. You can download it from here. It is important because BS did some fixies and updated coova in 30136. Also, go to dd-wrt forum and ask about specific build before flashing your unit. These are all test builds!!!
Go to Setup>Basic setup page. Uncheck Use DNSMasq for DHCP and Use DNSMasq for DNS. This is very important because you need uDHCPd for working HSS at the moment.

IMPORTANT: The router has to be in the same time zone as HotSpotSystem authentication servers so you won't get sync error. Set Greenwich (ETC - GMT+00) as your time zone regardless your local time.

DNSMasq and Local DNS should be turned on.

Now, on the Wireless> Basic Settings>Virtual Interfaces Add Virtual Interface. Unbridge it from the LAN (br0) and assign IP adress to the interface (192.168.182.1/255.255.255.0).

Apply settings! Wait about 30 seconds and you will see that new interface ath0.1 appeared on sysinfo page. You will se new VAP (Virtual Access Point) and SSID will apear in the list of wifi networks. Note: naming of the interface can varie by chipset vendor, and can be any of the following: wl0.1 (Broadcom), ath0.1 (Qualcomm Atheros former Atheros), ra1 (Mediatek former Ralink). 

If you are using PPPoE to connect to your ISP, your ppp0 MTU (e.g. 1492) link could be lower then tun0 (1500) link to HSS wich could lead to problem when opening certain web pages. To avoid this on Administration/Commannds add this directive as your firewall rule and Firewall Save:

iptables -t mangle -I POSTROUTING -p tcp --tcp-flags SYN,RST SYN -m tcpmss --mss 1421:65535 -j TCPMSS --clamp-mss-to-pmtu

Now, go to Services>Hotspot tab and enable Hotspotsystem service like on the screenshot below:

Apply settings and wait about 90 seconds to renew want IP and chilli optware to be loaded, You are ready to go. Try your Hotspot by connecting to it.

Manage your splashpage and clients on Hotspotsystem Cloud: When you login to your Hotspotsystem control center here, go to Manage/Locations/Modify Hotspot Data & Settings.

Click on the Splash Page Settings and choose your skin. This will be your landing page that customer will see when they login.

In Hotspot data you can enter Latitude and Longitude if you wan your HS to be visible on the map.

Enjoy!
Mile-Lile

Additionaly you can use dd-wrt QoS to set interface priority. Set LAN&WLAN (br0) to maximum and ath0.1 to bulk. This way your HS won't affect your internet speed!